Steps
by miss selah
Summary: One two one, will you dance with me? [Mohinder Sylar][Above and beyond '.07'][Very Sweet oneshot]


_up to and post .07_

_Liberties taken with 'Parasite' and '.07'_

* * *

**_Steps_**

* * *

_The first time Sylar steps in to his life, Mohinder hates him._

Even though he doesn't know him yet.

"There is a man out there, a man who murdered my father and your friend and you just want to let him go!?" There is a desperation in his voice, a quivering tenor that he hadn't expected to be there. He falls to his knees in the middle of the crowded, dusty street, and weeps, because he has never had to do anything on his own before. He has never wanted to.

"What are you waiting for?" His father's friend, therefore, his friend too, asks him. "My approval? Your father's approval?" His voice is snide, but it only barely covers up the worry for him. "You will never get either."

Even though Mohinder needs it, he knows it too.

He stops caring. It's step one.

* * *

_The second time Sylar steps in to his life, Mohinder doesn't know it's him._

He calls himself Zane and he is fast with a laugh but faster with a smile, so he can't be bad. Even if Zane's apartment smells more like blood and decay than melted toasters. Mohinder's worries are nulled after only moments in Zane's presence. He listens to the Ramones for chrissakes, and when he thinks Mohinder isn't looking, he sings them too.

_Oh, you are a pretty one, a pretty one_

He isn't particularly good at singing, but he makes up for it with. . . other things.

_Oh, you make my motor run, my motor run_

He is so good at other things, in fact, that for a while, Mohinder forgets the reason he came here.

It's step two.

* * *

_The third time that Sylar steps in to Mohinder's life, they already knew one another._

"Welcome back, Sylar." His voice is flat and his head hurts and his heart is dead, dead, dead, just like his father is.

Sylar wakes up strapped to the same chair that he had taken Mohinder on just a few weeks prior, drugged and groggy. "What?" he asks, stupidly. Drunkenly. "What's going on?" His words are slurred and his vision is blurry, and he tries to play dumb and answer all of Mohinder's silly questions with lies, but he knows the jig is up.

Tonight it's time to make his move.

"I wasn't begging for my life." It's the first honest thing that Sylar has said all day. "I was begging for yours."

The bullet that Mohinder fired hangs in the air between them, and Sylar considers sending it back at him, straight in to his heart where Mohinder struck him the hardest. But there is something in Mohinder's eyes, something childish and innocent and scared, and Sylar can't find it in him to kill him.

He let's the bullet drop, and takes him, not soft and lovingly like Zane always has before, but rough and bloody and angry, like Sylar has always wanted to.

Mohinder cries. Sylar regrets.

It's step three.

* * *

_When Sylar steps out of his life, Mohinder isn't sad. He's bloody furious._

He tears through the apartment that they shared together, overturning furniture and kicking in doors. The neighbors come to check in on him, but he ignores them, breaking glass and metal the _normal_ way, the way that Sylar was never satisfied with. . . the way that Mohinder happened to love.

A the pages in a children's comic book flip wildly as a breeze blows through a window that Mohinder doesn't remember opening, and he turns to rip that too.

An Asian man named Hiro stares up at him from the pages of "Ninth Wonders," eyes deject and downcast.

_We're all the same. Homogenous. Yogurt. _

Mohinder breaths, and calms down.

It's step four.

* * *

_It didn't even occur to him that Sylar wouldn't step back in to his life after he had fled with Peter's dead body to the home of the Petrelli's._

When he doesn't, Mohinder begins to rebuild the home that they shared that they shattered. He cleans, and wishes that things were still simple.

It is easy to hate him for killing his father. Even if sometimes Mohinder has a hard time believing it was really him. Because Mohinder has seen him smile in his sleep, and sing Ramones when he thinks no one is listening, and dance in the rain when he thinks no one can see. Mohinder used to know that it was him, that Sylar was a murder and Sylar was a fiend, but now that he had met him, it was hard to believe that he could really be all that bad.

It was harder to love him, because it was wrong on so many levels, and Sylar had never told him any sort of sweet nothings.

And Mohinder, the child, always preferred to take the easy way out. So he cries, and pretends that nothing had changed. That there isn't a vaguely Sylar shaped hole inside of him. That there isn't something_ missing.  
_

As it turns out, that's the hardest thing of all to do, because as Mohinder cleans, he realizes that there is something missing. Something that he didn't break.

A glass cage, another Mohinder.

Mohinder sees his lizard missing, and stops crying long enough to laugh. He knows what it means, but he lies to himself anyways.

And that's step five.

* * *

_Mohinder chases. Sylar flees._

It's the immortal dance of lovers - the hunter and the prey. Hades and Persephone. Romeo and Juliet. Erik and Christine. _Them. _

Until one day, Sylar gets sick of it.

Mohinder holds him against a cold stone wall, his hands above his head, and wonders why he hasn't killed him yet. Wonders why the rain reminds him of bedrooms and wonders why Sylar is smiling, even as he is looking in to the face of death.

Mohinder draws his weapon - a gun - and holds it to Sylar's temple, a tries to pretend that rain is that only thing coming down tonight.

"Go on, Mohinder." He says it like Zane used to say it, and then "shoot me" in a voice that is entirely his.

Mohinder's finger dances on the trigger against his will, and he tries to pull his arm away. Sobbing, Mohinder buries his face in Sylar's neck and wonders why he is the only one that ever cries.

Sylar's arms wrap around him and he doesn't apologize. He doesn't apologize in _exactly _the right way that Mohinder knows exactly what he means.

They kiss, and Mohinder doesn't wonder anymore.

_ C'est la vie._


End file.
